Maddams - The River Cottage game handbook

For Isaac and Flora

Bloomsbury Publishing

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This electronic edition published in 2017 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

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First published in Great Britain 2015

Text Tim Maddams, 2015

Foreword Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, 2015

Illustrations Toby Atkins, 2015

Tim Maddams has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

All rights reserved
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data has been applied for.

ISBN: 978-1-4088-5832-5 (HB)
ISBN: 978-1-4088-9656-3 (eBook)

Project editor: Janet Illsley

Designer: Will Webb

Illustrator: Toby Atkins

Indexer: Hilary Bird

The publishers would also like to thank Sam Carlisle for his assistance.

While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information contained in this book, in no circumstances can the publisher or the author accept any legal responsibility or liability for any loss or damage (including damage to property and/or personal injury) arising from any error in or omission from the information contained in this book, or from the failure of the reader to properly and accurately follow any instructions contained in the book. The recipes supplied in the book are for personal use only. No recipe may be used for commercial purposes without the express permission of the author.

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Contents

All meat used to be game . Ten millennia ago, every ounce of animal protein consumed by humans was hungered for, hunted down, hard won. It wasnt until people began farming animals that a distinction could be drawn between wild and farmed meat. We bred our domesticated livestock over centuries to be fat, slow, succulent and, above all, abundant. One consequence of our success in this venture is that game now exists only on the fringes of our diets. Even the most committed and adventurous of carnivores is likely to eat far more farmed meat than wild. And in that process the taming of our tastes, if you like we have lost something.

We are so used to the pale, mild, well-fatted flesh of domesticated birds and beasts that game, dark and lean and richly flavoured, can come as a bit of a shock. What can also be shocking is that game so often arrives back from a shoot, or on the butchers counter, even sometimes at the table, too looking like what it is: a dead animal. If youre used to chops, sausages, mince and chicken breasts, its an eye-opener to behold a row of pigeons in their shiny grey feathers, or a muddy-furred rabbit, as the raw ingredient of your dinner; or indeed to be presented with that rabbit roasted on your plate skinned and headless, but with its limbs and distinctive body shape still much in evidence.

For some, this is a real problem. Many consumers are comfortable only with food that is designed and controlled by the hand of man and sanitised, if not outright disguised, before it reaches the table. In fact, for many, the higher the level of intervention, the more processing and polishing involved, the greater the trust placed in the food. But for some of us, the opposite is the case. With meat, in particular, the less it has been interfered with, both during its life and after its death, the better. I count myself in this camp, and so does Tim Maddams.

Anyone who loves meat, and has no ethical objections to eating it per se, will still come up against all kinds of problems when buying it in practice. The poorest levels of animal welfare are still represented on our shop shelves in factory-farmed pork, for instance. And even if you stride firmly to the opposing end of the spectrum and choose organic meat raised in the highest welfare systems, you cant deny that those animals have still lived lives hedged and hemmed in by humans. Wild game (but not reared game) offers an alternative because it is plucked from the midst of a natural, instinctive existence. It would be disingenuous to say that we dont still shape the environment of those creatures to some extent, either deliberately or otherwise, but wild game animals and birds live in a state of freedom that farmed animals can never achieve.

That is just one reason why I like game meat and why I would like to see it better understood and more widely consumed in the UK. We can nourish ourselves perfectly well without meat if we choose to do so, but if we are to end an animals life in order to satisfy our hunger, surely snatching that animal in a split second from a natural existence is about the best and most humane way to do it.

There are many other reasons to celebrate game, not least the fact that it offers a broad and varied range of delicious tastes and textures. Animals that have grown on a truly wild diet have flesh imbued with all sorts of herby, rich, sweet and pungent flavours. The leanness of game is hugely appealing in a world where our diets are dominated by fat and sugar. And there are the benefits of higher omega-3 levels in creatures that have eaten a diet rich in grass and greens, as opposed to grains.

As with any meat, game does not come without a side order of thorny issues. The quick, clean dispatch of an animal or bird in the wild cannot always be guaranteed, for instance. And there is the knotty problem of game that is not truly wild the pheasants and partridges that are fed and fattened by gamekeepers so that they may be driven deliberately over waiting guns. Is this better than being raised in a farmyard and trucked to an abattoir? In the end you must make up your own mind about this, and the other ethical issues relating to game. In this book Tim offers you the information you will need to do so, alongside his own frank opinions on the matter. He does not shy away from the complex questions that surround meat-eating in general, and game-eating in particular, and I admire his honest and thoughtful writing on the subject.

Ive had the great pleasure to work with Tim in the kitchen, but also to shoot and fish with him. His infectious enthusiasm and energy are coupled with some fiercely held principles: hes someone who takes his food, its provenance and its welfare, very seriously indeed. He has that quality so many good hunters share: a genuine fascination with, and respect for, the prey animal. And, for Tim, that fascination and respect extend into the kitchen.